Are the Celtics playing the Heat or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, because apparently the only thing we had to fear was fear itself.
(ba-dum… CRASH)
I wouldn’t call that a tense game, nor would I call it a close one. In fact, I wouldn’t even really call that much of a game. It was more like an exhibition, with two basketball teams putting on an educational demonstration of what happens when the Miami Heat without Jimmy Butler come into contact with a healthy Celtics team stacked to Latvia and back with top-end talent.
As with any educational presentation, there had to be a twist that the second-grade class wasn’t expecting. This came when the Heat cut the Celtics’ once-34 point lead to 14 after Boston decided they were done with this snooze fest with about eight minutes left in the fourth quarter. That was as close as it got, and history will forget the exasperated groans of TD Garden when Delon Wright hit back-to-back threes to force a Celtics timeout in a game that was supposed to already be over.
Don’t worry about any of the X’s, O’s, or any other letters of this play for now. Just listen to the crowd when he hits the shot. You can clearly hear someone—or perhaps a few people—shout “NO!” complimented by a smattering of disapproving chatter. But the “NO!” wasn’t an expression of fear—like the “noooooo!” from a horror movie when the slasher closes in with their machete—but rather an exclamation of rejection.
Whoever shouted that was answering the question the Celtics players seemed to be asking: “should we blow this game right now?” Encased in that cry was a complex message: “no, Celtics, you shouldn’t blow this game. In fact, should you blow this game, it would be the greatest comeback in NBA history. So please don’t.”
Those emotions were understandable, and I was feeling them myself. But the Celtics never really were at risk of blowing that game, and the Heat’s foray into the lead should probably be remembered as a flash in the pan invited by a Celtics team that had nine of their ten toes already back home and in bed. If you ever find yourself freaking out about the Celtics blowing a lead late in a game, here’s a quick math exercise I like to do to calm myself down.
With 2 minutes and 10 seconds left, the Heat had the ball down by 14. Barring four-point plays, the minimum number of possessions needed to score 14 points is five. Let’s assume perfect conditions—which never happen—and that the Heat can shoot a three eight seconds after getting a rebound or inbounding the ball. At the very, very, very, very least, they will require 40 of those seconds to score 14 points in five possessions.
The Celtics, for their part, are awarded 24 of those seconds each time the Heat score. Of course, nothing in the real world will be this exact, but let’s say the Celtics dribble the air out of the ball and simply commit a shot clock violation every 24 seconds. By the time the Heat could even take their fifth three-pointer, there will only be five seconds left in the game. Here’s a fun table that explains that.
According to this highly sophisticated model, if the Celtics played as poorly as they possibly could—never once scoring or getting a stop—and the Heat played 100 percent perfectly—never once needing more than nine seconds to get a good look—they would just barely be able to eek out a win with five seconds left. Up 14 with 2:10 left, I’d put the odds of the Celtics winning at 99.97 percent chance.
There are reasons I am not a data-science major. This is not how basketball works nor how quantitative reasoning works either. The Heat could get steals or force other turnovers, thereby bypassing the Celtics’ 24 second violation, and Miami could very reasonably use timeouts to advance the ball and score in as little as 0.3 seconds.
But that table is exactly what I’m creating in my head when I see the Celtics standing around like lampposts waiting to have all they’ve worked for stolen by a team that apparently remembered basketball games are 48 minutes long, rather than the 40 Boston seemed content with.
That effort was indefensible, and Al Horford rightly called out his teammates for slacking on the job like a bunch of deer-in-the-HEATlights (ba-dum-CRASH). But the Celtics were never seriously at risk of losing that game, and the second-grade level math going on in my brain proves it.
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25411564/2147986347.jpg)
Photo By Winslow Townson/Getty Images
If anything, it’s good that the Celtics got punched in the mouth for six minutes in the fourth quarter, since the proceeding 40 were about as difficult as fitting a square peg into a square hole. From the opening tip, Boston made no equivocations about their intentions. They didn’t have any real tricks up their sleeve, nor were they going to try a never-before-seen rotation or lineup. They were simply going to pull out a mini-gun and shoot Miami out of the game.
The Celtics rained threes on Miami like they had a dinner reservation to get to by the third quarter. They converted 22 of 49 attempts from deep, which had the effect of being way-too-many-points on way-too-few-possessions for the Heat to feasibly come back from. Every single Celtic—except, ironically, Jayson Tatum who was working on his first playoff triple double—made at least two threes, and nothing encapsulated the night more than Sam Hauser strapping four straight attempts in under three minutes.
What makes the Celtics so overpowering is the sheer variety of their spacing. Luke Kornet missed the contest, which meant all eight Celtics who saw the floor were elite-level outside shooters, affording them some truly interstellar spacing that they used to put the Heat in a headlock.
If Kristaps Porzingis has a one-on-one matchup with Tyler Herro in the paint, someone has to completely abandon their assignment to come help. And it doesn’t even matter who it is, as any available Celtic won’t wait to pull the three if they find themselves open.
While I don’t know for sure, it does feel like Boston gives their entire roster an equally green light to shoot off the catch, as Horford, Payton Pritchard, and Hauser don’t hesitate for even a moment if they find a look they like. And you never see any of the starters questioning their decision either, meaning they probably do have instructions to “just shoot it” when they’re open.
This works well against Miami’s heavy use of zone defense. With proper positioning and ball movement, zones that are designed to seal off common driving lanes leave corner or elbow shooters wide open. The Celtics knocked down plenty of threes against the zone, but also crashed the offensive boards like absolute maniacs all night, with Pritchard and Jrue Holiday of all people routinely diving into piles trying to create extra possessions.
Ultimately, Miami lost because they brought mid-range fadeaways and post-hooks to a gun fight. Their brief, slightly-but-not-too-worrying run was supported almost entirely by a barrage of threes, something they’ll have to do a lot more of if they hope to make this series go any longer than four. Even then, they’ll need to beat the Celtics at their own game, something almost no team in the league has been able to do this year.
